Chapter III: The Rivals (6)

As soon as the pope has breathed his last amidst the consolations of religion, and after making his profession of faith in presence of the cardinal grand-penitentiary—who usually administers the last sacraments—and of the more intimate members of his court, the cardinal-chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church, accompanied and assisted by the right reverend clerks of the apostolic chamber, takes possession of the palace and causes a careful inventory to be made of everything that is found in the papal apartments.[30] He then proceeds to the chamber of death, in which the pope still lies, and, viewing the body, assures himself, and instructs a notary to certify to the fact, that he is really dead. He also receives from the grand chamberlain of the court—_Monsignor Maestro di Camera_—a purse containing the Fisherman’s ring which His Holiness had used in life. The cardinal, who, by virtue of his office of chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church, has become the executive of the government, sends an order to the senator of Rome, who is always a layman and member of one of the great patrician families, to have the large bell of the Capitol tower tolled, at which lugubrious signal the bells of all the churches throughout the city are sounded. Twenty-four hours after death the body of the pope is embalmed, and lies in state, dressed in the ordinary or domestic costume, upon a bed covered with cloth of crimson and gold, the pious offices of washing and dressing the body being performed by the penitentiaries or confessors of the Vatican basilica, who are always Minor Conventuals of the Franciscan Order. It is next removed to the Sistine Chapel, where it is laid out, clothed in the pontifical vestments, on a couch surrounded with burning tapers and watched by a detachment of the Swiss Guard. On the following day the cardinals and chapter of St. Peter assemble in the Sistine and accompany the transport of the body to the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in the Vatican basilica, where it remains exposed for three days, the feet protruding a little through an opening in the iron railing which closes the chapel, that the faithful may approach and kiss the embroidered slipper. The nine days of funeral services—_Novendialia_—which the Roman ceremonial prescribes for the pope now begin. These are his public obsequies. For the first six days the cardinals and prelates of the court and Holy See assemble daily in the choir chapel of the canons of St. Peter, where, the Office for the Dead being chanted, a cardinal says Mass; but during the remaining three days the services are performed around an elevated and magnificent catafalque which in the meanwhile has been silently erected in the great nave of the basilica. This structure is a perfect work of art in its way, every part of it being carefully designed with relation to its solemn purpose, and in harmony of form and proportions with the vast edifice in which it is reared. It is illustrated by Latin inscriptions and by paintings of the most remarkable scenes of the late pontificate, and adorned with allegorical statues. A detachment of the Noble Guard stands there motionless as though carved in stone. Over the whole is suspended a life-size portrait of the pope. A thousand candles of yellow wax and twenty enormous torches in golden candelabra burn day and night around it. On each of these three days five cardinals in turn give the grand absolutions, and on the ninth day a funeral oration is pronounced by some one—often a bishop, or always at least a prelate of distinction whom the Sacred College has chosen for the occasion. In former days the cardinal nephew or relative of the deceased had the privilege, often of great importance for the future reputation of the pontiff and the present splendor of his family, raised to princely rank, of selecting the envied orator. Ere this, however, the final dispositions of the pope’s body have been made. On the evening of the third day, the public having been excluded from the basilica, the cardinal-chamberlain, cardinals created by the late pope, clerks of the chamber and chapter of St. Peter, headed by monsignor the vicar—who is always an archbishop _in partibus_—vested in pontificals, assemble in the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, in which the pope still lies in state. The body is then reverently enfolded in the gold and crimson cover of the couch, and taken up to be laid in a cypress-wood coffin, into which are also put three red purses containing medals of gold, silver, and bronze, as many of each sort as there were years of the pontificate, bearing the pope’s effigy on one side, and a design commemorative of some act of his temporal or spiritual government on the other. If there should be a relative of the late pope among the cardinals, he covers the face with a white linen veil, otherwise this last office of respect is performed by the major-domo. When the coffin has been closed it is placed inside of a leaden case, which is immediately soldered and sealed, while the metal is hot, with the arms of the cardinal-chamberlain and major-domo. A brief inscription is cut at once on the face of this metal case, giving simply the name, years of his reign, and date of death. The coffin and case are now enclosed in a plain wooden box, which is covered with a red pall ornamented with golden fringes and an embroidered cross, and carried in sad procession to the uniform temporary resting-place which every pope occupies in turn in St. Peter’s, in a simple sarcophagus of marbled stucco which is set into the wall at some distance above and slightly overhanging the floor of the church, on the left-hand side of the entrance to the choir chapel. A painter is at hand to trace the name of the pope and the Latin initials of the words High Pontiff—_Pius IX., P.M._ Before the pope’s body is taken up from the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, some workmen, under the direction of the prelates and officers of the congregation for the supervision of St. Peter’s—_Reverenda Fabrica di San Pietro_—have broken in the sarcophagus at the top and removed its contents (which in this case were those of Gregory XVI., who had been there since 1846) to the crypt under the basilica until consigned to the tomb prepared, but not always in St. Peter’s, either by the pope himself before his death[31] or by his family or by the cardinals of his creation, and the new claimant for repose takes his place there.

During the nine days that the obsequies of the pope continue the cardinals assemble every morning in the sacristy of St. Peter’s to arrange all matters of government for the States of the Church and the details of the approaching conclave. These meetings are called general congregations. At them the bulls and ordinances relating to papal elections are read, and the cardinals swear to observe them; the Fisherman’s ring and the large metal seal used for bulls are broken by the first master of ceremonies; two orators are chosen, one for the funeral oration and the other for the conclave; all briefs and memorials not finally acted upon are consigned to a clerk of the chamber, etc., etc. On the tenth day the cardinals assemble in the forenoon in the choir chapel of St. Peter’s, where the dean of the Sacred College pontificates at a votive Mass of the Holy Ghost, after which the orator of the conclave—who, if a bishop, wears amice, cope, and mitre—is introduced into the chapel, and, after making the proper reverences, ascends a decorated pulpit and holds forth on the subject of electing an excellent pontiff: the pope is dead; long live the pope; the Papacy never dies![32]

After the sermon and the singing by the papal choir of the first strophe of the hymn _Veni Creator_, the cardinals ascend in procession to the Pauline Chapel in the Vatican palace, where the dean recites aloud before the altar the prayer _Deus qui corda fidelium_, and afterwards addresses his brethren on the great business which they are about to engage in, exhorting them to lay aside all human motives and perform their duty without fear or favor of any man. All the persons who are to remain in conclave, as the prelates, custodians, conclavists or attendants on the cardinals, physicians, barbers, servants, are passed in review, and take an oath not to speak even among themselves of matters concerning the election. Every avenue leading into the conclave, except the eight loop-holes or windows, as mentioned in a former article, are carefully closed by masons; one door, however, is left standing to admit any late-coming cardinal, or let out any one expelled from, or for whatever cause obliged to leave, the conclave. It is locked on the outside by the prince-marshal, and on the inside by the cardinal-chamberlain, both of whom retain the key of their own side. The lock is so combined that it requires both keys to open the door. On the following day the cardinal-dean says a votive Mass _de Spiritu Sancto_, at which all the cardinals in stoles receive Holy Communion from his hands.... _Fervet opus_....

* * * * *

As soon as the cardinal upon whom the requisite two-thirds of all the votes cast have centred consents to his election, he becomes pope. This consent is absolutely necessary, and, although the Sacred College threatened Innocent II. (Papareschi, 1130-1143) with excommunication if he did not accept,[33] it is now admitted that no one can be constrained to take upon himself such a burden as the Sovereign Pontificate.

Thirty-eight popes, from St. Cornelius, in 254, to Benedict XIII., in 1724, are recorded in history as having positively refused to accept the election, although they were afterwards induced by various motives, however much against their own inclinations, to ratify it. As soon as he has answered in the affirmative to the question of the cardinal-dean, proposed in the following very ancient formula: _Acceptasne electionem de te canonicè factam in Summum Pontificem?_ the first master of ceremonies, turning to certain persons around him, calls upon them in an audible voice to bear witness to the fact.[34] The new pope then retires and is dressed in the ordinary or domestic costume of the Holy Father, three suits of which, of different sizes, are ready made, and disposed in the dressing-room for the elect to choose from. It consists of white stockings, cassock and sash with gold tassels, white collar and skull-cap, red mozzetta, stole, and shoes. He then takes his seat on a throne and receives the first homage—_adoratio prima_—of the cardinals, who, kneeling before him, kiss his foot and afterwards his hand, and, standing, receive from him the kiss of peace on the cheek. We see, from the ceremonial composed in the thirteenth century by Cardinal Savelli, that the present custom is not very different from the mediæval one; for, speaking of the pope’s election, he says: _Quo facto ab episcopis cardinalibus ad sedem ducitur post altare, et in ea, ut dignum est, collocatur; in qua dum sedet electus recipit omnes episcopos cardinales, et quos sibi placuerit ad pedes, postmodum ad osculum pacis._ The custom of kissing the pope’s foot is so ancient that no certain date can be assigned for its introduction. It very probably began in the time of St. Peter himself, to whom the faithful gave this mark of profound reverence, which they have continued towards all his successors—always, however, having been instructed to do so with an eye to God, of whom the pope is vicar. In which connection most beautiful was the answer of Leo X. to Francis I. of France, who, as Rinaldi relates (_Annal. Eccles._, an. 1487, num. 30), having gone to Bologna, humbly knelt before him and kissed his foot, _se lætissimum dicens, quod videret facie ad faciem Pontificem Vicarium Christi Jesu_. “Thanks,” said Leo, “but refer all this to God himself”—_Omnia hæc in Deum transferens, et omnia Deo tribuens_. To make this _relative_ worship more apparent a cross has always been embroidered on the shoes since the pontificate of that most humble pope, St. Gregory the Great, in the year 590. It is curious to read of the objection made to this custom by Basil, Tzar of Muscovy, to Father Anthony Possevinus, S.J., who was sent to Russia on a religious and diplomatic mission by Gregory XIII. in the sixteenth century. His eloquent defence of the custom, appealing, too, to prophecy,[35] is found in the printed account of his embassy (_Moscovia_, Cologne, 1587, in fol.)

When the pope is dressed in the pontifical costume he receives on his finger a new Fisherman’s ring, which he immediately removes and hands to one of the masters of ceremonies to have engraved upon it the name which he has assumed. The popes have three special rings for their use. The first is generally a rather plain gold one with an intaglio or a cameo ornament; this is called the papal ring. The second one, called the pontifical ring, because used only when the pope pontificates or officiates at grand ceremonies, is an exceedingly precious one. The one worn on these occasions by Pius IX., and which his successor will doubtless also use, was made during the reign of Pius VII., whose name is cut on the inside. It is of the purest gold, of remarkably fine workmanship, set with a very large oblong diamond. It cost thirty thousand francs (about $6,000), and has a contrivance on the inside by which it can be made larger or smaller to fit the wearer’s finger. (Barraud, _Des Bagues à toutes les Époques_. Paris, 1864.) The Fisherman’s ring, which is so called because it has a figure of St. Peter in a bark throwing his net into the sea (Matthew iv. 18, 19), is a plain gold ring with an oval face, bearing the name of the reigning pope engraved around and above the figure of the apostle, thus: _Leo XIII., Pont. Max_. On the inside are cut the names of the engraver and of the major-domo. The ring weighs an ounce and a half. It is the official seal of the popes, but, although the first among the rings, it is only the second in the class of seals, since it serves as the privy seal or papal signet for apostolic briefs and matters of lesser consequence, whereas the great seal of the Holy See is used to stamp the heads of SS. Peter and Paul in lead, and sometimes, but rarely, in gold, on papal bulls. This ring was at first a private and not an official one, as we learn from a letter written at Perugia on March 7, 1265, by Clement IV. to his nephew Peter Le Gros, in which he says that he writes to him and to his other relatives, not _sub bulla, sed sub piscatoris sigillo, quo Romani Pontifices in suis secretis utuntur_. From this it would appear that such a ring was already in well-known use, but it cannot be determined at what period it was introduced, or precisely when it became official, although it is certain that it was given this character in the fifteenth century; but another hundred years passed before it became customary to mention its use in every document on which the seal was impressed by the now familiar expression, “Given under the Fisherman’s ring,” which is first met with in the manner of a curial formula in a brief given by Nicholas V. on the 15th of April, 1448: _Datum Romæ, apud Sanctum Petrum, sub annulo Piscatoris, die xv. Aprilis, MCCCCXLVIII., pontificatus nostri II._[36]

Briefs are no more sealed with the _original_ ring, which is always in the keeping of the pope’s grand chamberlain, who, as we have said, delivers it to the cardinal-camerlengo on the pope’s decease, to be broken in the first general congregation preliminary to the conclave, according to a custom dating from the death of Leo X. A fac-simile is preserved in the _Secretaria de’ Brevi_ which serves in its stead; but since June, 1842, red sealing-wax, because too brittle and effaceable, is no longer used, but in its place a thick red ink or pigment is employed. _Briefs_ are pontifical writs or diplomas written on thin, soft parchment and more _abbreviated_ than bulls, and treating of matters of less importance, requiring, therefore, briefer consideration[37]—whence, perhaps, they derive their distinctive name, although it has been suggested that the word comes from the German _Brief_, a letter, and was introduced into Rome from the imperial court during the middle ages. They are signed by the cardinal secretary of briefs, and differ from bulls in their manner of dating and their forms of beginning and ending. Their heading always contains the name of the reigning pope and the venerable formula, _Salutem et apostolicam benedictionem_, which was first used by Pope John V. in the year 685. When the pope sends a brief to a person who is not baptized he substitutes for this form the other one, _Lumen divinæ gratiæ_. Both briefs and bulls are always dated from the basilica nearest to which the pope resides at the time; thus, we understand why the brief erecting the diocese of Baltimore was dated (6th of November, 1789) from St. Mary Major’s, although Pius VI. was then living at the Quirinal palace. Another of the very ancient and venerable forms used by the popes is _Servus servorum Dei_—Servant of the servants of God. It is a title first assumed by St. Gregory the Great in the sixth century as a hint to the arrogant patriarch of Constantinople, John the Faster, who had taken the designation of _universal bishop_, which belongs only to the Roman Pontiff: “Whoever will be first among you shall be servant of all” (Mark x. 44).

As soon as the cardinal who has been elected gives his assent to the election, the cardinal-dean asks him what name he would wish to take. This custom of assuming a new name is very old, and has been much disputed about by writers on papal matters. The great Baronius has expressed the opinion in his _Ecclesiastical Annals_ that John XII., who was previously called Octavian, was the first to make the change, which he did probably out of regard for his uncle, who was Pope John XI. Cardinal Borgia has observed in this connection, as showing that the change of name was yet a singularity, that the pope used to sign himself _Octavian_ in matters relating to his temporal, and _John_ in those relating to his spiritual, government. Martinus Polonus started a fable that Sergius II., elected in 844, was the one who first changed his name, because known by the inelegant appellation of Pigsnout—_Bocca di Porco_; but the truth is, as Muratori says in one of his dissertations on Italian antiquities (_Antiquitatum Italic._, tom. iii. dissert. xli. p. 764), that Sergius IV. (1009-1012), and not Sergius II., had this only for a surname or sobriquet, as was commonly given in that age at Rome, but was baptized Peter. He changed his name, indeed, according to the custom then becoming established as a rule, but, as Baronius observes, not _ob turpitudinem nominis (Os porci), sed reverentiæ causa: cum enim ille_ PETRUS _vocaretur, indignum putavit eodem se vocari nomine, quo Christus primum ejus sedis Pontificem, Principem Apostolorum, ex Simone Petrum nominaverat_. It has long been usual for the new pope to take the name of the pope who made him cardinal. There have been, however, several exceptions even in these later times. In some special cases, as in the signature to the originals of bulls, the pope retains his original Christian name, but, like all sovereigns, he omits his family name in every case. There have also been exceptions to this change, and both Adrian VI. and Marcellus II. kept their own names—the only two, however, who have done so in over eight hundred years.

The word pope—in Latin _Papa_, and by initials _PP._—was once common to all bishops, and even to simple priests and clerics; but when certain schismatics of the eleventh century began to use it in a sense opposed to the supreme fatherhood of the Roman Pontiffs over all the faithful, clergy as well as people, it was reserved as a title of honor to the bishops of Rome exclusively. Cardinal Baronius says, in a note to the Roman Martyrology, that St. Gregory VII. held a synod in Rome against the schismatics in the year 1073, in which it was decreed “_inter alia plura, ut _PAPÆ_ Nomen unicum esset in universo orbe Christiano, nec liceret alicui seipsum, vel alium eo nomine appellare_.”[38] Another singularity about one of the pope’s titles deserves to be noted. The word _Dominus_ in Latin—lord—was originally used only of Almighty God, and a contracted form—_Domnus_—was employed in speaking of saints, bishops, and persons of consideration; but in course of time, although a vestige of the once universal custom still lingers in the _Jube Domne benedicere_ of the Office recited in choir, the term _Domnus_ came to be specially reserved to the Roman Pontiff, for whom we pray in the litany as _Domnum Apostolicum_. Cancellieri, who, as usual, has sought out an abstruse subject, gives everything that can be said upon the matter in his _Lettera sopra l’Origine Delle Parole Dominus e Domnus e Del Titolo Don che Suol Darsi ai Sacerdoti ai Monaci ed a Molti Regolari_. In Roma, MDCCCVIII.

Footnote 30:

The apostolic chamber, called in Rome the _Reverenda Camera
Apostolica_, dates from the pontificate of Leo the Great, who
constructed in the year 440 a small but elegant suite of chambers
which served as a sanctuary for the bodies of the apostles SS. Peter
and Paul until proper crypts, called _Confessions_, had been prepared
for them beneath the high altars of their respective basilicas at the
Vatican and on the Ostian Way. When these relics had been deposited in
their present resting-places, the Leonine sanctuary was used, as a
strong and venerable place, to contain the public treasury of the Holy
See, which was given into the safe-keeping of certain officials called
_camerarii_. Their successors are the present _chierici di camera_,
who are eight in number and form one of the great prelatic colleges of
Rome. The present institution was reorganized by Pope Urban V. in the
fourteenth century. The cardinal-chamberlain is _ex officio_ its head,
and it acts as a board of control over the finances.

Footnote 31:

It is known to all visitors to Rome that Pius IX. prepared a beautiful
tomb for himself before the high altar of St. Mary Major’s.

Footnote 32:

Roman bibliophilists anxious to possess—what is rare indeed—a complete
set (_una biblioteca_, as the Italians say) of the funeral orations
pronounced over the popes, and of the hortatory discourses addressed
to the Sacred College about to enter conclave, eagerly contend at
book-sales for these pamphlets, which are always in the choicest Latin
of the age, and sometimes have a sentimental value on account of the
subsequent fortunes, or misfortunes, of their authors. They are much
more than mere literary curiosities for book-worms to feed upon. The
form of the title-page, excepting of course in proper names and dates,
is about the same in all; for instance, _Oratio habita ad Collegium
Cardinalium in funere Innocentii IX., Pont. Max., vi. Id. Januarii,
1592_: Romæ, 1592, in 4to: by Father Giustiniani, a famous Jesuit; and
_Oratio habita in Basilica SS. Apostolorum Petri et Pauli pridie
Kalend. Aprilis, 1721, ad Emos. et Rmos. cardinales conclave
ingressuros pro Summo Pontifice eligendo_: Romæ, ex Typographia
Vaticana, 1721, in 4to: by Camillo de Mari, Bishop of Aria.

Footnote 33:

Arnulfus of Seez apud Muratori, _Rerum Italicarum Scriptores_, tom.
iii. p. 429, says that on this occasion the cardinals told the elect
of their choice: _Si acquiescis, exhibemus obsequium; si recusas,
exigimus de inobedientia pœnam_; and on his still hesitating _parabant
excommunicationis præferre sententiam_.

Footnote 34:

This notarial function which the first master of ceremonies here
performs is the reason why he is always an apostolic prothonotary; but
his title to this prelatic rank rests entirely on _custom_, since he
is not appointed by papal brief, as others are. It is by a similar
analogy, although in matters theological, that the master of the
Sacred Palace, who is always a Dominican, ranks with the auditors of
the _Rota_.

Footnote 35:

“Kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and queens thy nurses: they shall
worship thee with their face toward the earth, and they shall lick up
the dust of thy feet.”—Isaias xlix. 23, which St. Jerome interprets of
the apostles; but in Peter’s successors all honors and prerogatives
continue. A very learned writer of the last century, Gaetano Cenni,
has gone profoundly into the historical and antiquarian part of this
singular and most venerable custom, in his dissertation _Sul Bacio De’
Piedi Del Romano Pontefice_, which is the thirty-fourth of the third
volume of Zaccaria’s great collection of dissertations on subjects of
ecclesiastical history—_Raccolta Di Dissertazioni Di Storia
Ecclesiastica_.... Per cura Di Francesco Antonio Zaccaria, etc.
Seconda edizione. Four vols. Rome, 1841.

Footnote 36:

The celebrated antiquarian Cancellieri has written with his usual
diffuseness and erudition on this matter in a little work, _Notizie
sopra l’Origine e l’uso dell’ Anello Pescatorio_, etc., etc.,
published at Rome in 1823.

Footnote 37:

Briefs, says the learned Benedictine Mabillon, _De Re Diplomaticâ_
(lib. ii. cap. xiv.), _brevi via, seu manu, remotis omnibus ambagibus,
absolvuntur; quippe quæ a Pontifice, ut plurimum sponte et absque rei
longa discussione conficiuntur_.

Footnote 38:

We had the good fortune once to pick up at a book-sale in Rome for a
few cents a rare and curious little book on this topic, which gives
the very marrow of the subject in a very agreeable form: _Lettera di
A. L. Nuzzi, Prelato Domestico Del Sommo Pontefice Sull’ Origine ed
Uso Del Nome PAPA_. Padova, 1 Settembre, MDCCXCVIII.

PALM SUNDAY.

Claiming the hill-crowned city as its own,
The gray cathedral rears its rough-hewn front
Like ancient fortress built to bear the brunt
Of leaguering ram on e’er unyielding stone;
Signing with holy cross the land it claims,
Its walls protecting seek the infinite blue
Grown, softly falling painted window through,
High heaven brought down to shape life’s noblest aims.

In this strong fortress, safe from those salt waves
Of doubt that curve and break and evermore repeat
The weary lesson of life incomplete,
Moaning and groping in unsunny caves,
Beating against a rock that will not break,
Flinging their bitter anger far on high,
Seeking to chill the tender flowers that lie
Close nestled to the rock for its warmth’s sake,

I kept sad feast one doubting April day,
When robins’ song had drifted from the hills,
When buds were bursting, and the golden bells
Of town-nursed bloom were ringing ill away.
With folded hands St. Helen’s glance beneath,
I trod in thought the highway of the cross—
Jerusalem’s triumph blending with her loss,
The palm-bough changing for the thorny wreath.

And clasped the folded hands about the bough
Of northern hemlock that as palm I bore,
Listening the words of sorrow chanted o’er—
The old evangel’s solemn voice of woe;
O wondrous power of a passing breath!
O tearful sweetness of that voice of God
Breaking amid the clamor of the crowd
Of Jews and soldiers hastening him to death!

Often the chant bad stirred my soul before
In humbler church, till had familiar grown
Almost each word and every varying tone
That with each added year a new grace wore;
But never grace so pitiful as this
That filled the arches with all deep distress,
With passionate sense of human guiltiness—
Our God sore bruised for our infirmities!

Oh! blinding sweet the vision that awoke
Within my soul to fill my eyes with tears!
To-day was it, not in those long-past years,
That Heart divine, with love unbounded, broke.
Oh! blinding sweet in its strange melody
The voice that, rending heart, called from the cross,
In that dark hour of life’s bitterest loss,
“_Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani!_”

O strong gray walls! blessed was that little space
Ye left our souls with Christ on Calvary,
Where hearts might weep their living cruelty,
In their own depths Jerusalem’s lesson trace.
O cross-boughed branch of spicy northern spruce
That witness bore on that dim April day
To faith no waves of doubt shall wash away,
To love’s dear chains no envious state shall loose,

Blessing was ours who bore thee that gray morn
Through all the heedless glances of the street,
Through longing looks that knew thy meaning sweet,
And spoken words of unbelieving scorn.
Alas! for those, of eyes and heart both blind,
Who in such symbol find but empty rite,
Who, dazzled by a false and flickering light,
See not the cross wherewith the palm is signed.

CATHEDRAL OF THE HOLY CROSS, BOSTON, MASS.

THE LATE Mr. T. W. M. MARSHALL.[39]

On the 14th of December, 1877, died, at the age of sixty-two years and a half, Mr. T. W. M. Marshall. He had borne a long and trying illness of many months with invariable patience and resignation, and gave up his soul to his Maker and Redeemer after a most Christian preparation. He has well deserved that some more explicit notice of his life and what he did in it should be made public than what has hitherto, so far as we know, been given in any native or American source of information. The following slight account is drawn up by one who has known him well for nearly a quarter of a century.

Mr. Marshall was born the 19th of June, 1815; was educated under Dr. Burnup at Greenwich and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was ordained in the Anglican Church by the bishop of Salisbury in 1842. In 1844 he published his _Notes on the Episcopal Polity of the Church of England_, for which he received the thanks of the then archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Howley. This was the prelate, it may be remarked, to whom the writers of the famous _Tracts for the Times_ dedicated their translation of what they called “this library of ancient bishops, Fathers, doctors, martyrs, confessors of Christ’s Holy Catholic Church,” with, as they added, “his grace’s permission, in token of reverence for his person and sacred office, and of gratitude for his episcopal kindness.” We mention this, because thanks from such a man in such an office for a work on the episcopal polity of the Church of England in 1844, when that polity was not a little canvassed, was an omen of good things to come for the writer, who was then nestled in a very small and poor cure among the Wiltshire downs, once a house of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. These prospects were blighted for ever by Mr. Marshall’s conversion in the following year, 1845. Indeed, he seems in that year to have committed two acts, one blameless and the other highly to be commended, which yet in their conjunction foreboded a life of no small anxiety in temporal matters; we mean to say that his marriage was followed in a few months by his reception into the church at Oscott by Dr. Wiseman. Thus the nest in the southern hills was lost just as he wanted its shelter most, and instead of the future protection of him whom the Tractarian dedication called “The most reverend Father in God, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England”—a patron, it may be added, of one hundred and seventy livings, besides canonries and options—Mr. Marshall, at the age of thirty, with a young wife, commenced a new life without a profession and without prospect, and with fifty pounds in his pocket. It may be said Mr. Marshall was true all his life long to the spirit which he thus showed at the first crisis of it.

It may be conjectured that the studies made by Mr. Marshall in composing his work on the episcopal polity of the Church of England predisposed his mind in the following year to seek admission into that world-wide community over which presides the head and source of the episcopate.

It was hardly possible that a clear and conservative and eminently logical mind such as that with which he was naturally endowed could have its attention fixed for so long a time as is requisite to compose a well-thought-out work upon the relations of the bishops to each other throughout the world, without coming to the conclusion that the Anglican episcopate rests on no definite basis whatever; without noticing that no one of its defenders has ever yet been able to state on what positive basis it claimed to stand. It exists, in fact, by reviling the Church of Rome, being itself nothing else but a fragment of Western Christendom severed by Tudor lust and despotism from the _compages_ of Christian unity to which it once belonged, and dragging on an existence in subjection to the state which eminently represents in ecclesiastical matters the insular pride and independence of the English mind. Its root is national, not Catholic; its soil human, not celestial; and for a thinking mind, such as Mr. Marshall’s, to examine its position could lead but to one result when it was accompanied by such honesty of purpose as, by the grace of God, Mr. Marshall possessed and manifested.

For let none misconstrue what Mr. Marshall was doing. To give up at thirty years of age, just married, with no private fortune, the profession of clergyman in the Church of England to become a Catholic layman, was an act not only of remarkable honesty but of superhuman courage. At thirty human life presents a long avenue of years. The prospect of traversing these in poverty and obscurity, with a young wife by your side, when the reasonable hope of honor and affluence has just been presented, is one which perhaps it requires greater trust in God, greater fortitude to meet, nay, to choose, than those, for instance, exhibited who heard themselves ordered to summary execution by the “abagi jussit” of the refined and philosophic Roman gentleman, Pliny the Younger, for having addressed their hymns in the early morning to Christ their God.

Anything, humanly speaking, more absolutely hopeless than Mr. Marshall’s position, after taking that step in 1845, as a married ex-clergyman convert, cannot be conceived. At that time private education offered no emolument, for pupils were entirely in the hands of institutions taught by priests or of individual priests; and as even now the services of a priest, well educated and intellectually gifted, are thought among Catholics in England to be adequately remunerated by the salary of one hundred pounds a year, what chance had a married convert to pick a living out of that mode of employing his brains? Much more was writing—that is to say, for Catholic objects—unremunerative. Brains are still at a fearful discount among Catholics in England. They are not paid as much as the lowest unskilled labor; and if this is true in 1878, judge how it was true in 1845. The writer believes that it was the very last time he saw Mr. Marshall when he complained bitterly of the inadequate remuneration that he received for writing. Then, further, for any occupation in the outside world, to be an ex-clergyman Catholic convert was the worst possible recommendation. The writer remembers a most distinguished author in Anglican history quitting the railway carriage in which he was sitting, in order not to converse with one who had lately deserted what was called “the church of his baptism”—as if Christian baptism was insular in its nature, and was a peculiar possession belonging to the “penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos.” Such is the lot which, for a whole generation since Mr. Marshall’s conversion in 1845, he and a host of others have voluntarily encountered. Mr. Marshall may be taken as a typical instance of the class. He may be spoken of freely now. He has run his course; he has kept the faith; he knows now fully, as none of us yet know, the wisdom of such a course; as he knew once, as none of us can more fully feel, the folly of such a course in the estimation of the world.

Most unexpectedly, however, and in a way that he could not the least have foreseen, this common lot of indigence and inaction, in which the _work_ of life and the _head_ which supports it are together taken away in the case of a married clergyman-convert, was terminated about three years after by his appointment as an inspector of schools in the government system of primary education. The Catholics were entering into that system in 1847, and, as a consequence of the rules and conditions obtained by the Catholic poor-school committee with reference to such entry, the appointment of a Catholic to the office of inspector by the government, whose nomination, however, was to be approved by the committee as representing the Catholic body, became necessary. The first so appointed was Mr. Marshall, and he held the office from 1848 to 1860. There cannot be a doubt that the functions which he there had to discharge were in certain respects functions which required great delicacy of touch. It was not without many suspicions that Catholic clergy admitted an officer of the government into their schools. That those who had been in old times forbidden every act of their ministry, pursued by ferocious spies of the state into their most secret lurking-holes, unearthed in order to be tortured by the race of Cecils and Walsinghams, and then hanged, drawn, and quartered—this in the first stage of the state’s enmity; then, in the second, who had been contemptuously ignored, and left to struggle with every trial of poverty, and to collect their scattered sheep in holes and corners—that the descendants and inheritors of such men, in whom the royal blood of Peter was flowing, should suspect at first the servants of a government which had done such things in hatred of Peter’s royal blood, this was most natural. We are convinced that during the five years in which Mr. Marshall was the only Catholic inspector of primary schools, he did much by courtesy, and yet more by his character as an uncompromising Catholic, to do away with this suspicion, and to lead an ever-increasing number of Catholic primary schools to accept inspection. By this conduct he indirectly raised greatly their standard of efficiency in secular instruction; and he commenced that union of the spiritual and the secular authority in the work of education which is now bearing great fruit, and which is incomparably fairer to the dearest interests of Catholics than the system existing in the primary schools of the United States. We think, indeed, that Mr. Marshall, in his anxiety to conciliate, may sometimes have pushed the limits of indulgence somewhat too far. It is honorable to him that he never spared in his reports to government the open commendation of religious teachers. Some of those reports contain the most enthusiastic praise of Catholic teaching which we remember to have read. And they were reports of a government official.

His occupation of inspector ceased in 1860; and being fully conversant with the circumstances which led to his quitting a post of honor and trust, which was then producing to him an income of eight hundred pounds a year, we must express our strong feeling that it was a great error of judgment on his part which led him so to act that it was possible to deprive him of this office. He was thus thrown back into all those difficulties of maintenance which he had so bravely encountered fifteen years before. It is true that Mr. Marshall was in fibre an author; the elementary character of the education he had to control, and the constant iteration of its petty details, besides the exclusion from his range of inspection of all those religious instructions in which he would naturally have taken a great interest—these things galled him. He fled for refuge to the more interesting subject of “Christian Missions,” on which he composed the well-known work published by him at Brussels in 1862, but which, in spite of the vast number of volumes which it required him to look over for his facts, he managed to compose before he quitted the inspectorship. If he could have had the place of a professor in some great Catholic institution, which would have afforded him a moderate income and a fitting subject on which he could have thrown the powers of his most active and apprehensive mind, that would have been to him an earthly elysium. But elysiums are not of the earth, at least not of nineteenth-century earth to Catholics in England. He gave up eight hundred pounds a year to be for the rest of his life a vigorous, witty, sarcastic, and trenchant Catholic champion and a wanderer on the face of the earth. From henceforth he was of those who have “no abiding city.” If he began this second stadium of his life with an act of imprudence which religion did not call for, which, in our individual judgment, we think it did not even justify, he traversed those seventeen years of bitter trial with the spirit of a confessor, and he ended them with the death of an humble, contrite, earnest Christian. He on whose words, defending Catholic doctrines, illustrating Catholic truths, excited multitudes in great cities have hung, who could make them thrill through with the emotions which he felt himself, died in a small room over a shop in an obscure outskirt of London, tended by an unwearied, uncomplaining affection which had been proof against every sorrow and every trial, and was the only earthly consolation left to him. In the eyes of the world it was a sad end of an agitated life. But we make bold to say that he is not sorry now for his choice; and that what he accepted rashly he transformed by endurance into matter for lasting reward, for the praise which does not pass away.

For in this last stadium of his life he showed most conspicuously that which we consider to have been the special honor of it. Let us state succinctly the remaining facts in that life, and then pass to a brief consideration of them. Mr. Marshall went in 1869 to the United States with his family, intending to settle there, which intention, however, he abandoned on a further acquaintance with the country. He lectured there during the winters of 1870-1 and 1871-2 on “The Liberty of the Catholic Church,” “St. Paul and Protestantism,” “Ireland’s Providential Mission,” in most of the large cities. In 1872 he brought out _My Clerical Friends_, and later on _Protestant Journalism_, reprinted from the London _Tablet_, for which he wrote a series of articles on Russia and on ritualism. It was the latter series which was brought to an abrupt termination by his illness in June, 1877. In 1866 he was decorated with the Cross of St. Gregory the Great by the Holy Father as a recognition of his services in the cause of the church; and in 1871 he received the honorary degree of LL.D. in the Jesuit College at Georgetown, near Washington. He broke down at the age of sixty-two. A life which, under less trying circumstances, might have been considerably prolonged, in the possession and exercise of those mental gifts with which he was richly endowed, was thus terminated before its natural time.

What is the lesson which it presents to us? We say without hesitation that the Cross of St. Gregory which the Holy Father presented to him hung on the breast of a true Christian knight. Not for gold nor earthly honor would he sacrifice one jot of Christian liberty. He preferred to be paid poorly for his work as a Catholic than to be paid richly, as he might have been, had he chosen to lay out the gifts of eloquence and clear reasoning and the power of satire which he possessed, in some of many non-Catholic causes. Had he even chosen to write, as many Catholics think themselves constrained to do, on secular subjects, merely taking care not to offend the spirit of the time—intensely anti-Catholic as that spirit is—had he written with all his energy and wit, not against his religion, but keeping it in his pocket, he would, we think, not have died at sixty-two nor in penury. But, so doing, he would not have been worthy of the Cross of St. Gregory; he would have been the world’s journeyman, not the Cross’s knight. Rather than so live, he has died _sans peur et sans reproche_, with his career shortened, as is the wont of knights; with his shield battered but stainless; with his lance unlowered. God grant many knights of such temper to his church in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, for the times are coming when they will be wanted!

Footnote 39:

In our last number we published an article on the works of this
illustrious Catholic layman by one closely connected with him.
Immediately on receiving the sad news of Dr. Marshall’s death we wrote
to his friend, Mr. T. W. Allies, who will be known to our readers as
the author of _The Formation of Christendom_, asking him to prepare
for THE CATHOLIC WORLD a more adequate notice than we had seen of one
who had done so much for the Catholic cause. The result is the present
article, which, though it comes after the other, will be none the less
pleasing to our readers, coming from such a pen as that of Mr. Allies,
and dealing as it does rather with the personal life and character
than with the public work of its subject.—ED. C. W.

STRICTURES ON AN ARTICLE ENTITLED “POLITICAL RAPACITY OF THE ROMISH
CHURCH.”

Following the advice once given by an old Anglican preacher to a newly-fledged brother, “When you have nothing else to say, pitch into the pope,” Rev. Mytton Maury contributes to the January number of the _American Church Review_ an article having for title “The Political Rapacity of the Romish Church.” Intrinsically the article hardly deserves a reply, owing to the recklessness with which it puts forth mere assertions and inferences as though they were facts; while yet it should, perhaps, under present circumstances, not be silently passed by without at least a statement of historical truth in regard to some of the events and their causes, which are therein so perverted as to seem to present a sort of partial foundation for deductions that are utterly false. The explicit aim of the article is to show that “in recent as in past times, the unalterable aim of the Church of Rome has been the establishment of its unconditional supremacy, as in things spiritual, so in things political.”

It is the old, often-exploded tale that took very well with the _gobemouches_ in the days when everything said against the church, true or false, was grist to the Protestant mill, but which cannot stand for a moment against a clear, full, and impartial examination of history. The gist of Mr. Maury’s argument is that, as the demeanor of the Papacy was intolerably overreaching and overbearing during the pontificate of Gregory VII., as the Church of Rome is always the same, as not even the gratitude which Pope Pius VII. owed (_teste_ Maury) to the Allied Powers who overthrew Napoleon was sufficient to make that pontiff bate a jot or tittle of the rights of the church, and as not even outrage, injustice, and spoliation were sufficient to induce Pius IX. to forget or barter any of the doctrines or claims of the church, so there is nothing to be expected of any future occupant of the Holy See but that he shall be politically a ravening wolf. _Q. E. D._ There pervades the article a curious after-taste of a once straight-forwardly-asserted but throughout-insinuated straining on the part of the church in these United States after political aggrandizement—a charge well suited in itself, could it only be made plausible, and we think intended, to catch the ears of the groundlings. Reference is made to a late pamphlet of Von Sybel, from which the writer would seem to have culled his one-sided statements; and we have in the meantime tried to procure that pamphlet, deeming it far better to examine the original than to refute mere _excerpta_. The _brochure_ in question has not yet been received, and we must content ourselves with a refutation of the ill-founded charges and an exposition of the baseless statements contained in Mr. Maury’s article.

There is an exquisite appropriateness in the fact that the charge of _political rapacity_ comes from a minister of that sect of which Henry VIII., half-Catholic, half-Protestant, and wholly beast, was the acknowledged supreme head, the so-called bishops of which sit in the British House of Lords, and owe their appointment to anybody, Jew or Gentile, who may happen to be prime minister. Lord Melbourne—by no means a model Christian, unless as entitled to the name by being an adept in profanity—leaves us ample testimony of the cliquing and caballing by which the appointments to vacant sees were secured, and puts on record a jocose saying that they (bishops and deans) just died to plague him. It is true that their presence in the Lords means nothing, and that they have no power but that of being a little obstructive. That, however, is not their fault. They would fain have more power, if they could. Even in their dioceses they have no sort of effective power belonging to a bishop. Neither clergy nor laity obey them even in spiritual matters, whether in England or in the United States; nor can we for our life see why, on Protestant grounds, in view of the utter nullity of their office, so far as its influence for good is concerned, they have not long ago been abolished, as much more valuable articles have been done away with. In political life other sinecures have in this century been got rid of. Irish disestablishment, which these bishops opposed to their utmost, will infallibly prove the precursor of a similar _fait accompli_ in England. If, after that, the members of their sect choose to maintain them, and even to add to their number, we can have no sort of objection, because then those who utterly repudiate their ministry will not, as now, be obliged to contribute to their support. They may, if they please, match the American army in the proportion of highly-paid, showy, and useless officials to the number of rank and file; in fact, they come in the United States pretty near doing so already. But that is not our business, since we do not pay for them; still, we cannot help having an opinion in the matter.

Again, an impartial observer might reasonably think that a preacher of a sect whose ministers, and, we suppose, their congregations, are of every persuasion or utter want of creed touching the essentials of faith, from the narrowest Calvinism to the most pronounced Puseyism—some of whose highest dignitaries deny the inspiration of Scripture, while others are Universalists, and others, again, denounce the doctrine of baptismal regeneration—a sect which has, in short, less claim to consistency either of faith or practice than any other of all Protestantism—would have enough to attend to in trying to find out what his church did believe and what he should preach, without travelling away to Rome and back to the days of “Hildebrand” for the purpose of raking up falsehoods or misapprehensions with which to bespatter or cast suspicion upon the Church of Rome. This is, perhaps, but a matter of taste; and Mr. Maury’s idea both of taste and duty differs from what ours would be in the same premises. In any case let us see what he has to say, giving his statements such credit as they may prove to deserve.